Waitin' for the Worms
by Lee Savage
Summary: Y'know, evil alliances with super-baddies of eternal darkness ain't that swell. Subordination's even worse. 'Round the clock waiting, yadda yadda yadda. Rules, deadlines. I think it's like human school, only you get to kill people.


Author's Note: DarkHououmon requested a oneshot, I believe, about evil Sprx and Otto holding Chiro captive; I believe that was the gist of it, though I'm uncertain because the journal that included the request is no longer available (went delete-happy on my DeviantART account a few years ago).

* * *

**Waitin' for the Worms**

* * *

When Antauri died, Nova refused to cry; instead, she beat the scrap outta a punching bag. Y'know, the kinda thing that's good for release and all.

That's how Nova deals with things, y'see. Beating punching bags. Or Sprx. Too bad the latter punchee's going, going, gone.

"No, S-Sprx," Otto calls as he watches his comrade diving toward the "hate . . . fire thingamajig."

_What's he doing? He could, he could—_

"Sprx, come back!"

Otto follows.

Just great.

* * *

The Super Robot's control room is dim, near-empty. Everything smells heavily of something like death. No natural light enters inside, as per usual. However, as per not-usual, unusual—whatever it's called—

"Psst!"

The Chosen One, Mr. Hairless Monkey, is tied against a chair-pod by a viscous black substance. As stories where the hero is asleep when the action occurs in the waking world are dull, it is very fortunate that Chiro awakes in the dim, near-empty control room. Well, for us—the sake of the readers. Chiro disagrees, and this humble narrator can hear his protests from outside the wall.

Heavy eyelids crack open. Bones ache.

"Hrrrm?" Chiro mumbles. Everything is a gray blur, as things can be with.

"W—ugh—" Chiro chokes on his own spit. "Guh, where am I?"

A cacophony of squawks kick-start above Chiro's head. A screech follows.

Some raucous noise hisses in the blackness of the room, no reflections around to give away anything.

_What? That's a—where . . . ._

_Somebody's _laughing_._

"Hey, kid," says the darkness. "Guess that dandy ol' perception trick 'Tauri never sank in." The boy grits his teeth and grimaces.

Another voice responds, "Yeah, that guidance whatsit doesn't come in handy much, huh?"

_Yeah, huh._

The boy struggles against his bonds. His hoarse voice calls, "C'mon, show yourselves!"

"Uh-huh, 'cause heroic bravado works wonders in life-or-death situations."

_Who, no—wait . . . ._

"_Never been better."_

The boy coughs, his throat dry and sore. "S-Sprx. What did—what did you do?"

_But there's ano_—

_Otto!_

_What, why? How could this, where's . . . ._

And there the red simian is—leaning against the wall adjacent to the main computer.

"Y'know, evil alliances with super-baddies of eternal darkness ain't that swell." Sprx stifles a yawn. Chiro withholds a gasp when he sees that the only difference in his teammates—besides their dispositions, of course—was a row of sharper, longer teeth. "Subordination's even worse. 'Round the clock waiting, yadda yadda yadda. Rules, deadlines. I think it's like human school, only you get to kill people."

And there the green simian is, Mr. Fix-Some-of-It, hanging from the ceiling, tail curling around a pipe.

Otto-but-not-Otto nods. "Yeah, yeah, like being good, 'cept bad stuff's okay. Kinda like what Mandarin used to say, right Sprx?"

Sprx lends a dramatic sigh and twirls a finger in the air. "Dunno. Never listened to that windbag, ha."

A heavy ringing in his ears causes the Chosen One to cringe. He needed to, he had to . . . .

Sprx decides to lighten the stuffy silence. "I remember back when I had drive, the heroic M.O., never realizing that I was the same tool that I am now." His voice lowers, soft and whispering. "But hey, at least I'm on the winning side."

"Oh, I like tools!" Otto chimes.

Chiro is filled with nothing but frantic questions. And a particularly nasty migraine reserved for stressed, overworked parents and middle-age teachers. "Where're the others?" Something holds the Chosen One back, refrains him from summoning the Power Primate—kicking butt and taking n—

_No, no, you can't do that. No here, not with _them_._

It's dear Otto's turn at the round of evil giddiness as he falls next to Sprx. "They're, um, really tied up with something else right now, bud." The monkey's teeth gleam and his shoulders scrunch like a child with an amazing—albeit daunting to others—secret to expel (hush hush).

"Yeah, tied up with other things," the red simian adds, and sighs yet another mock-sigh. "You'd think Good Guys would realize sooner or later that making demands while they're strapped to chairs doesn't rectify much." Sprx cringes, reminded of Gibson at the word "rectify." "Then again, I suppose that was one of my vices, not that there are many, of course." He relaxes.

"Hey, Otto, go check on Captain Shuggazoom."

Otto's features light up more-so in his typical Otto way. "'Kay!"And he prances away.

Sprx crosses his arms and stares at his former leader—or, rather, the ringmaster. That's what they—the proposed "leaders"—all were anyway, right? The boy throws the cyborg a withering gaze.

"Just waitin' for orders from Death Breath, oh la-dee-dah." The boy doesn't want to know, really; well, he does, but . . . .

Chiro groans. "I can't believe you touched that stupid flame."

The mechanic darts to Sprx's side.

"Hey, it's not stupid! I liked that flame thing!" Otto rubs his hands along his sides. "It made everything so fluffy and warm and red!"

Chiro commences with his groaning and lowers his head, thinking, trying to summon the Power Primate, anything—A-Antauri.

"Oh," Otto turns to his companion. "And that old guy's still alive!"

Sprx-but-not-Sprx rubs his temple with two fingers. "And why were we told to keep that useless ol' dingbat alive, again?"

A faint whirring sounds in the distance.

Sprx starts. "O-Otto, did you make sure that everything was secure? That they were holding _up_ okay?"

The green mechanic scratches his head. "Right. Uhh, errr, well . . . ."

"Otto, quit messin' around!"

"Oh, uhh, okay!" The mechanic scrambles away, and Sprx follows, shaking his head.

* * *

Really, Gibson didn't get that far in his escape; unfortunately, the formless goop beat him to it.

So, the blue simian struggled. And struggled. And struggled with as much stunning decorum you could garner in a desperate, desperate situation.

"See, Sprx!" Otto exclaims, beaming from auditory receptor to auditory receptor. "Nothin' to worry about!"

The mechanic's partner glares at Otto, and Otto slinks back a step. Then, Sprx smirks at his captive. Some part of him, embittered by its captivity, even bothers to smile with him this time. "At a loss for words for once, Hal?"

Otto bounces forward and starts an insidious and unfair game of unrequited poking—rewarded with annoyed grunts.

"Otto, p-please!"

The green monkey freezes. That tone, the frustration and even—maybe—pleading. It . . . it . . . .

"Gib—Gibson?" Otto whispers. "What, uh, are you—Why . . . ."

For an instance, there's hope.

And Otto's fellow baddie seizes the instance.

"Oh, c'mon, Otto! You don't wanna help ol' Brain-Strain, do ya?" Sprx creeps next his pal-in-depravity, the monkey with eyes widened like saucers (hmm, well, more-so than usual).

The mechanic blinks. Once, twice. He stares at Gibson, the simian now trying to mumble through the ooze now wrapped across his big mouth.

Otto stares at Sprx. Their eyes meet, and the green simian sees depths and depths of fathomless, expressionless blackness. A blackness so black that that it only possessed blackness—every other description word merely be a negative identifier.

Then, Otto pouts. "He never liked my inventions!"

Hope averted.

A second passes before Otto thinks of something to say from his jumbled mind, still looking at Sprx with a pleading blankness. "Where's Valina, again?" He didn't like that lady. No, the witch patted him on the head and told him what an insipid little monster he was.

Sprx snorts. "She died."

"Oh."

"Yeah, shame too. She digged me a lot, I bet." The red simian nudges Otto with a little too much force.

"Ooow, my tongue!"

"Dug," Gibson, with a fistful of disgusting goo tangled in his mouth, corrects as Otto nurses his mouth, pulling out his tongue and testing its flappiness.

Sprx twitches. "Jeez, why haven't I killed you already?" It's uncertain to whom the statement is addressed.

* * *

"Stupid, monkey-doodlin' screen doesn't work," the red monkey complains. His knuckles tap against the wall. He hears Otto banging around with a mess of wires and metal plates about him.

"We make Mandarin look real bad, don't we, Sprx?" Otto asks, peeking out from the mess and grinning.

Sprx grumbles, "Depends on your definition of the word 'bad'."

Otto flips open his helmet and stuffs a wad of metal whatsits in his head. Afterward, he winces. "Ughhh, I think it hit my brain."

A faint pounding sounds in the distance.

The red monkey presses a palm across his exasperated countenance.

* * *

Author's Note: Just had a funny idea of having Original!Mandarin swoop in and save the day. An idea for another week, maybe.

I don't remember the general infrastructure of the Super Robot, but now there're pipes in the ceiling of the control room. If they weren't already there, Otto installed them.


End file.
